Bethany Joy Lenz: ‘One Tree Hill Saved My Life’ During ‘Painful’ Decade Spent in Bible-Based Cult

Bethany Joy Lenz is opening up about a “painful” period in her life, one that sounds like a storyline straight out of One Tree Hill, the teen drama on which she starred from 2003 to 2012.

In a new interview with our sister publication Variety, the actress details her 10-year involvement with a “Bible-based cult” whose controlling leader she likens to NXIVM’s Keith Raniere, the subject of the HBO docuseries The Vow.

“I was very committed to my faith and just got some really bad advice,” she says of joining the group, which began as a weekly Bible study. “I was really committed to being the best version of me that I can be within the context of what I knew.”

Lenz says her involvement with the group spanned “the entirety of [her] time on One Tree Hill,” explaining that “it was the whisper behind the scenes” on the show’s North Carolina set. “It was open with them,” she recalls. “For a while, they were all trying to save me and rescue me, which is lovely and so amazing to be cared about in that way. But I was very stubborn. I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make.”

The cult’s goal was to isolate Lenz from everyone around her, something she says “built a deep wedge of distrust” between her and the show’s cast and crew. “As much as I loved them and cared about them, there was a fundamental thought: If I’m in pain, if I’m suffering, I can’t go to any of these people,” she says. “So you feel incredibly lonely.”

Fortunately, Lenz was too busy and constantly surrounded by friends and coworkers to ever find herself truly isolated.

“In a lot of ways, One Tree Hill saved my life, because I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina,” she says. “I had a lot of flying back and forth, a lot of people visiting and things like that, but my life was really built in North Carolina. And I think that spatial separation made a big difference when it was time for me to wake up.”

Though Lenz doesn’t think she was ever “consciously scared” during her time with the cult, she recalls “a few physical interactions” that left her rattled. “And some of those moments actually caused me to be able to recognize a bit of what was happening to me and start to make strides to get out,” she says, adding that she officially left the cult “very shortly after” One Tree Hill ended in 2012.

Lenz first mentioned this cult somewhat offhandedly during a recent episode of Drama Queens, the weekly One Tree Hill rewatch podcast she co-hosts with fellow cast members Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush. This marks the first time she has discussed it in-depth, and she is in the process of documenting her experience in a book.

Click here to read Lenz’s entire interview with Variety.